


petals

by savedby



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Hanahaki Disease, M/M, Trope Subversion/Inversion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-03-13 22:14:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18949702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/savedby/pseuds/savedby
Summary: Connor squints at his gloved hands, at the vivid splash of red. For a moment, it looks like blood and then his vision clears. It’s a flower petal, delicate and perfect, and deep dark red. He closes his fingers around it, crushing it.or,you can love something so much it'll make you sick, but that still doesn't mean it'll love you back.





	petals

**Author's Note:**

  * For [somehowunbroken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/somehowunbroken/gifts).



> This fic was born from [a twitter thread](https://twitter.com/iamapodperson/status/1103777019719024640) by annapodfics that made me think about how the Hanahaki disease trope could be applied to more than just love between two people. Big thanks to Anna, for letting me riff off her idea and allowing me to reference their thread in my story, and also for looking things over and giving it the stamp of approval. Big thanks also to frecklebombfic, for the beta and the encouragement.
> 
> Dear giftee - I hope you enjoy this at least half as much as I did writing it.

 

 

Connor closes his eyes. They’re stinging, from the sweat that’s pouring down from his hairline. He’s tired, the kind of bone-weary he’d only ever known since his first season in the pros. The kind of tired that isn’t just physical. There’s sweat already drying under his uniform. A Sharks player zips past him to bump helmets with his goalie. He feels cold.

 

The Oilers fans up in the stands are quiet. That almost feels worse than if they were screaming or chanting, or whistling. The silence stinks of resignation. Not just another loss, but loss, continuous, year in and year out. The lineup changes, but the results don’t. That kind of thing, it takes its toll. It surprises him sometimes, that they even keep coming. 

 

He pushes his hair out of his face and opens his eyes. The stands are blurry, a sea of orange and blue, calm waters with something boiling under its surface. Someone touches his elbow. Leon, head bowed and hand trembling slightly. 

 

“We should go,” he says, and Connor chances a look at his face, finds something beyond regret. Something burns in his chest.

 

And burns. 

 

The cheers from the Sharks players come as if from a distance as he doubles over, coughing, Leon’s hand a worried weight on his back. Pain comes from a thousand tiny pinpricks in his lungs and his throat feels clogged up. He can’t seem to draw breath anymore. It feels like a panic attack. He knows those, tries to focus on Leon’s palm, on the cold sweat clinging to his jersey. Slowly, the pain ebbs away, bleeding in awareness of the outside world. Leon’s worried voice, the cheers, the oppressive weight of silence.

 

He squints at his gloved hands, at the vivid splash of red. For a moment, it looks like blood and then his vision clears. It’s a flower petal, delicate and perfect, and deep dark red. He closes his fingers around it, crushing it. 

 

Leon tugs on his elbow again. “Let’s go,” he says quietly, “you need to see a doctor.”

 

Connor nods. He keeps his fists clenched tightly and lets himself be pulled along. Off the ice. Away from the stares. 

 

The silence lingers. 

  
  


*

  
  


The team doctor gives him a clean bill of health. His motions are cursory, distracted. Maybe he’s already looking forward to an early vacation. Or maybe it’s just that there’s so many of them in line waiting for his attention. Some of the boys have been playing through broken fingers, broken toes, torn muscles and a multitude of bruises. In comparison, Connor’s had it easy this time around. It hadn’t helped, in the end. 

 

He meets everyone’s eyes, head on. It’s all he can really do. His teammates give him tired smiles and encouraging nods. No one really speaks, the oppressive silence having migrated with them from ice.

 

Leon meets his eyes, raises his eyebrows and looks at his chest. It still feels tender, with bruising from every time he got tackled into the boards, but the strange burning, ripping sensation is gone. Connor gives him a nod and Leon smiles back - a small, relieved thing.

 

It’s not technically the end of their season yet. There’s still a game against the Flames in a couple of days, which means that he isn’t expected to deliver an inspirational speech quite yet. He wishes he could anyway. Just to break the silence.

 

He’s barely stripped out of his jersey when the doors open to the journalists. At this point in the season, he knows their faces and which will be painted in barely concealed glee that’ll haunt him for hours. He looks instead at the other ones, the loyal ones, the ones who always wish them the best, and their frustrated disappointment is almost worse. 

 

Connor rubs at his chest, absentmindedly, as he stands up to face the microphones.

  
  


*

  
  


Connor always tells himself he won’t watch the playoffs after they drop out, but he ends up doing it anyway. 

 

Leon’s flown back to Germany for a while and the house in Edmonton feels too big, so he packs the opposite of his road trip luggage and takes a flight to Toronto to stay with his parents for a while. 

 

His old room looks the same. He sits on the bed and it creaks under his weight, and stares at the wall, sorting the posters into players he’s met on and off the ice. He reminds himself to take them down. He knows he won’t. 

 

It’s a little strange how alien it all feels, eating his mother’s cooking and listening to his father rant about football, and renting out the same rink he used to train at every day. He never noticed it, but somewhere along the line, he’s made his home in a city where the days are so short they barely feel like they’re seeing the sun at all.

 

He texts Leon where he is and doesn’t expect a reply because an app on his phone tells him it’s the middle of the night in Cologne. After a moment of consideration, he texts Dylan too. They’ve been keeping up sporadic conversations over the seasons. Dylan’s team hadn’t made the playoffs either, but he’s so ecstatic to be playing with Brinksy again that Connor can’t bring himself to remind him of that. 

 

He swipes open the text conversation with Mitch to his barely choked out, ‘Good luck,’ that sits in his inbox without a reply. Connor gets it. He doesn’t want to mess with his focus either, not right now.

 

Life settles into normal, even in a city in the throes of playoff fever. He stays in his house a lot and doesn’t look at the sidewalks when he goes driving. He’s fine. He’s dealing with things.

 

Except for how every night he wakes up in the early hours of the morning, choking on his breath, unable to draw the air into his lungs, his chest burning. It only lasts for a couple of minutes, it brings him to the edge of panic and then recedes, leaving him to drop off into confused slumber, filled with dreams of wickedly sharp thorns and tall flowering rose bushes.

 

He knows he should probably tell a doctor about it but when he wakes up in the morning it all just seems like it was a bad dream. Not something to be worried about. Just a weak reaction to where he was supposed to be strong. 

 

Connor keeps quiet. 

 

Until one night, (the Canes had beat the Caps a few hours earlier to win the series and his veins had burned with jealousy and frustrated longing), when he wakes up coughing, gasping for air and then vomits out a flurry of flower petals right in front of his horrified mother, who’d just gotten up to go to the bathroom.

  
  


*

  
  


“Is there a history of the illness in the family?” the doctor asks. The examination room is too bright, light reflecting off the white tile. There’s a child’s drawing hung up on the wall above a row of cabinets, but it looks old, the colors faded and the child’s name barely legible.

 

Connor is tired and hungry. There’s a cold breeze chilling him through the naked back of his hospital gown. His feet are bare, dangling in the air. It makes him feel vulnerable and childlike. It’s been a long couple of hours, doing various tests. It’s way past dawn outside, edging towards noon. One of his nurses had been wearing a Leafs pin. He couldn’t stop staring at it while she was in the room. His father’s eyes have dark circles under them and his mother’s hand is shaking slightly where it’s gripping his.

 

“Yes,” his father’s voice comes out rough, somewhat surprising. “My great aunt, she died from it. It was a very rare case, even then.”

 

A half-remembered recollection of a story told almost like a fairytale. Great aunt Marie, who loved a woman so much she died from it, confined to bed and choking on violets. It didn’t feel like it’d ever be relevant to him.

 

“Your team physician will have to be contacted,” the doctor says quietly. 

 

Connor feels exhausted and faintly sick, and he just wants to go home. Not to his parents' house, or his house in Edmonton but to the ice, with a stick in his hand and skates on his feet.

 

He doubles over, coughing. He knows for sure now, has seen the X-rays and the CT scan, that there are roses growing in his lungs, thin green stems with thorns like needles piercing through the soft tissue, and buds ready to flower. 

  
  


*

  
  


He tells Leon over facetime that same night.

 

“Hanahaki? I think I saw that movie. Something about unrequited love, right?” Leon says. It’s late and he’s been drinking a little, words coming a little faster, accent a bit more apparent and color high on his cheeks. “I went to see it with a girlfriend in high school. I missed most of the movie because I was awkwardly trying to make a move.”

 

Connor swallows around a dry throat. “I have it,” he says.

 

“Oh,” Leon breathes out, and the signal cuts out for a moment, making his face distorted. “Is...is there someone else?”

 

Connor shakes his head violently. He can understand how Leon came to that conclusion, but it feels terrible anyway. “No, you’re the only one…” he trails off, “I would have told you if it changed.”

 

“Okay,” Leon says, frowning slightly. “And it’s not me either, right? Because you should know by now how I feel about you.”

 

It makes something in Connor’s chest warm, but not in an unpleasant way. “I know,” he says softly.

 

Leon smiles at him. It’s clear that the full implication hasn’t hit him yet. 

 

An alarm on Connor’s phone breaks through the silence. 

 

“What’s that for?” Leon asks. Connor swipes the alarm shut. There’s sweat dripping down the back of his shirt. The air conditioning isn’t working in his room.

 

“The Leafs/Bruins playoff game,” he answers quietly and Leon has always been able to read him well. He must see something in his face, even on a grainy screen because he swears suddenly.

 

“Fuck, Davo, is that what this is?” he asks, and the tone of his voice makes Connor’s free hand curl into a fist. “Fucking shit...fuck, give me a couple of minutes to get my head around this. I’ll call you back.”

 

His face disappears off the screen with the loud beep of a dial tone. Connor looks away from it, stares at the walls instead, the rows of fading posters. His chest feels too-full and tender, like a big bruise or cracked ribs. He wonders what his breath will smell like now.

 

Slowly, he gets up to turn on the TV.

  
  


*

  
  


Management is conspicuously absent during his physical before the start of the new season. Connor has spent most of his summer consulting various specialists about his condition. The biggest concern for him had been if he could continue playing or not. The doctors seem surprised.

 

“You know you can die from this, right?” one had asked him, bluntly. Connor had shrugged. The concept seemed distant and unbelievable. Besides the occasional cough, he felt fine. Great, even. 

 

He can play, it turns out. He's fast, if not faster, and strong, if not stronger. If it weren’t for the X-rays of his chest, tacked onto everything else in his medical file, he could have passed for completely healthy. 

 

Connor is called to the coach’s office after his exam. Hitchcock is waiting. Somehow, he seems washed out in the brightness of his office lights, with deep dark circles under his eyes and new wrinkles in their corners.

 

“The doctors say you’re fit to play,” he says, quietly, staring at him. “And there are no rules in the league against playing with your illness, as long as it doesn’t impede your ability. The decision has to be yours, though.”

 

His tone is strange, almost pleading and Connor shrinks in on himself, uncomfortable. “I want to play,” he says because it’s the only thing that actually feels honest.

 

“Alright,” Coach Hitchcock says, heaving a sigh. “Then you’ll play.”

 

Just before Connor can close the door after himself, he sees him put his head in his hands. The gesture looks so defeated that it makes his chest hurt, and it’s only a few minutes later when he’s spitting wet, matted petals into a toilet bowl that he recognizes it for what it is.

  
  


*

  
  


The season starts off well. Four wins, one in overtime, and two losses, expected but painful. Connor feels fine on the ice. His skates glide easy and his palms are comfortable holding a stick. His lungs work as they should.

 

It’s off the ice that’s the problem.

 

The nights, when he wakes up in cold sweat, briefly failing to catch a breath, petals, red like blood in the moonlight, spilling across his sheets. It leaves him shaken, every time, and it usually keeps him awake until dawn, blinking dry, painful eyes at the first light.

 

It takes a toll, in deep dark circles under his eyes. He starts forgetting things, his car keys, and his best shirt. A turn signal. The world gains an unreal quality, too bright, with colors that are too vivid. He can't look at his jersey for too long. It gives him a headache.

  
  


*

  
  


Leon starts staying over.

 

He wakes up when Connor starts coughing and quietly rubs his back until it stops. It's dark in the room and Connor can't see his expression, so he doesn't know if he's being pitied or not. He allows it.

 

By the time he's finished with rinsing his mouth and brushing his teeth, Leon has already taken out and emptied the bucket of petals that was sitting by the bed.

 

They lay down. Leon curls up behind him, face tucked into Connor's nape and hands warm across his chest.

 

Sometimes, Connor even manages to fall back asleep. He doesn't dream.

  
  


*

  
  


Management sends Gretzky to talk to him. He isn't sure why, but they always send Gretzky to talk to him when they think it's something he might not like to hear.

 

"They haven't been able to secure any strong signings," Gretzky says after the pleasantries are over and done with. "And there's this surgery."

 

"Okay," Connor says, even though it isn't. "What surgery?"

 

It turns out that there's a specialist in Osaka, a surgeon from a long line of hereditary witches. She's developed a way to remove the illness from the body through extensive and relatively non-threatening surgery.

 

There's a catch to it, though.

 

"You lose all feelings for the object of your longing," Gretzky says. "Love, anger, passion, they all just disappear."

 

Connor stares at him, dumbfounded.

 

Losing what he feels about hockey? He can barely fathom it - a life where he doesn't define himself as a hockey player, where he isn't missing playing as soon as he steps off the ice, where his every waking moment isn't consumed with thinking about it. It's part of his identity. The only part that feels worthy, sometimes.

 

He can't imagine a life beyond it.

 

"What did management say?" Connor asks, hates how small his voice sounds. Gretzky smiles slightly, but it looks bitter.

 

"They would prefer that you not have the surgery and continue with the suppressants," Gretzky says. The words are bitten out and almost furious.

 

It's not fair, because the suppressants make him dizzy and aren't a guarantee he won't get worse. It's not fair, but Connor gets it.

 

A Connor McDavid that doesn't care about hockey is a Connor McDavid that has no use to the Edmonton Oilers.

 

"Ah, kid," Gretzky says, sounding sad and resigned, "I'd give you one of mine if I could."

 

Connor smiles at him, weakly. He appreciates the sentiment. "But not all of them?" he has to ask.

 

Gretzky laughs but there's not an ounce of humor in it. "If I didn't have any, I'd end up just like you," he says.

  
  


*

  
  


"I wish it were me," Leon whispers into his hair when the night is the darkest. 

 

Connor doesn't reply. Sometimes, he wishes it were Leon, too.

 

Because he could live without Leon, but he isn't so sure he can live without hockey.

  
  


*

  
  


The news comes out almost halfway through the season. An assistant isn't careful enough with Connor's medical file and pieces of it find their way to a reporter, who publishes it.

 

It's a slow news week, but it probably would have exploded either way. Connor gets it. A rare, almost mythical disease, combined with who he is and what caused it? It's an incredible piece of news. Everyone wants a piece of him.

 

The team issues a statement. Connor barricades himself into his house. Leon makes him terrible coffee and starts to learn how to make what he calls proper German bread.

  
  


*

  
  


_ A headline from the Daily Enquirer, December xx, 201x: _

_ "Connor McDavid is sick of the Edmonton Oilers - literally." _

  
  


*

  
  


The first time Connor walks into the locker room after the news breaks is awkward.

 

Some of the younger players are on the verge of tears. Most of them are avoiding his eyes, looking at their feet instead. There's some sniffling.

 

Ryan looks pale, like a ghost. He meets Connor's eyes dead on and the look hurts. He's wanted it just as much and for longer than Connor has, and yet Connor is here with thorns in his chest and Ryan is going to get criticized for it.

 

They're the two that were left behind, and even though they almost never talked about it, Connor knew that Ryan understood and that felt like enough.

 

If something happened to Connor -

 

If Connor left, Ryan would be the last one and the thought of it feels cruel.

 

Milan is Ryan's opposite in his red face and clenched fists. He looks like he's ready to fight the illness right out of Connor's body. Once upon a time, Connor told a camera that he wanted a protector. Back then his body had been a patchwork of bruises from all the times that opponents had failed to stop him. Things felt simpler back then, more black and white. He regrets the words only in the way they might have put pressure on others to fight on his behalf.

 

"We'll get it for you," Milan says, quiet conviction, a promise. There are several quiet voices chiming in with agreement.

 

Connor smiles faintly. "Let's get to practice, boys," is all he says.

 

He barely makes it to the bathroom in time, throat choked up with more than tears. 

 

He never does make it to practice that day. Instead, he gets rushed to the ER with a breathing tube down his throat and the doctors spend hours clearing out flower petals persistently clinging to soft tissues.

 

Connor wakes up to Leon's hand warm in his. His eyes are red-rimmed. 

 

Time feels like it's running out.

  
  


*

  
  


_ A headline from the Calgary Weekly Review, January xx, 20xx: _

_ "Is Connor McDavid faking illness to blackmail the Oilers into signing better players?" _

  
  


*

  
  


The public is vicious. He should have expected that, but truthfully, he’d barely given it any thought. On the rare occasions they’d spoken, PK had always attempted to instill some sense of media awareness in Connor. He’d failed, as had numerous lectures from the PR team. He just wasn’t cut out for it. He never really managed to learn how to make people like him.

 

The accusations are many, and they hurt. One day, his illness is made-up, on another, he’s using it for blackmail. There are lists - which team should Connor McDavid be traded to - that double as the current playoff rankings. 

 

His own fans seem to think it’s a betrayal. The attention brings more vitriol upon them and the team, so it’s no wonder they start lashing out. It’s a strange circle, and Connor is caught up in the middle of it.

 

He gets to avoid a lot of it, holed up in his big house and secure rinks, but his family isn’t nearly as lucky.

 

For Connor, the worst is probably when the NHL officials call him into an emergency meeting to Toronto, taking him out of practice and making him sit in a small stuffy room, listening as a specialist attempts to explain to Bettman and staff that it’s actually unlikely that Connor will drop dead during a broadcast. He supposes that kind of thing would be bad for the ratings.

 

It feels humiliating, to sit there and be discussed like he’s not even present. His future has been thrown in disarray since the diagnosis, but it’s especially hard to realize that its presence might not be the thing that takes him off the ice, but these suits might.

 

Connor swallows down bile and petals and bears it. At the end of it all, Bettman sweeps out of the room with barely a backward glance, furious that there’s nothing they can legally do to keep Connor from playing. Apparently, Connor has lost his status as the hockey world’s golden child. He can’t say he’ll miss it.

  
  


*

  
  


_ A video clip of a locker room scrum with Sidney Crosby, January xx, 20xx: _

 

_ Reporter: Sorry, Sid, could you tell us your take on the McDavid situation? _

 

_ Sidney Crosby, after pausing for a moment, visibly startled by an unscripted question: I think it’s only surprising that it doesn’t happen more often. With all the pressure we put on young players, to win, to be their best self every game, to carry a whole team on their shoulders, it’s not surprising that it happened. It’s happened to others too, except their condition wasn’t as obvious. Connor hasn’t had that luck. _

 

_ (He gulps in a breath, his titanium jaw flexing, making his profile look briefly strange and alien.) _

 

_ Reporter, more cautiously, yet determined to get his story: Since the news broke, several players, even prominent ones, have offered their services to the Oilers for the season in an attempt to bring them to the playoffs. Would you do consider doing something like that? _

 

_ Sidney Crosby, with a faint smile: Sure. But I don’t think that was the point.  _

  
  


*

  
  


There’s sweat falling into Connor’s eyes, making them sting, but he can’t close them. It feels like he’s not allowed to blink, not even for a second. His feet are burning in his skates and his lungs are burning from lack of air, but his mind is beyond physical sensation. His stick is an extension of his body and he’s got the puck. Everything is reduced to slow motion, but the goal is approaching fast, the goalie in front like a mountain at the gates.

 

There’s a smudge in the corner of his eye, teammates reduced to color and trust. He doesn’t have time to make sure they’re in position, just has to believe that they are, countless hours of repetition putting them where they need to be. 

 

Above them, the cacophony of their fans, coach’s voice cutting through it with intelligibly screamed instructions and underneath it all, the labored draw of his breath, the impact of the stick hitting the ice.

 

Its times like these Connor can believe he was made to do this, to be here, on the ice, in these moments. Nothing else could compare, nothing else could be as perfect. His burning eyes see the shot, the gap, and the infinity of open net beyond.

 

The horn sounds for the end of the game, as it must, cutting off dreams and crafting new ones.

 

*

 

_ Twitter thread by AnnaPodfics @imapodperson: _

 

_ “Okay but hanahaki disease doesn't make much sense if you take into account stuff like science and the aro spectrum. So what if it wasn't about somebody else's feelings (how could that impact the subject, it doesn't make sense unless) but about the longing itself?” _

_ (...) _

_ “Which means romantic pining but also platonic (take that allo standards) and also abstract (a concept, an ideal) or non-person-specific (friendship, intimacy, love and connection) or goal-specific (job success, life goals, another geographical place)” _

_ (...) _

_ “and getting rid of it the medical way means more bc discarding a long-held dream or a basic emotional need has way more impact on the character themselves (sense of self, of humanity, personality, life plans, etc, depending) than not being in love with a specific person.” _

  
  


*

  
  


Connor is sitting down on his bed in his parents’ house in Toronto. The room is piled high with boxes of stuff from his big house in Edmonton. It’s on sale now, its high ceilings and chandeliers waiting on a family to bring joy to. Leon bought a bigger apartment and Connor will move in with him next month. He needed somewhere to store his stuff in the meantime, hence the boxes.

 

He fiddles with his phone. It’s the middle of the night in Cologne. Connor had gone to visit Leon there, earlier that summer, and it feels like he hasn’t adjusted his internal clock back to Ontario time yet. Or maybe it’s the muggy heat of Toronto that makes time feel like it’s moving so much slower than usual. There’s an unreplied to text from Mitch sitting on his phone. He’ll get to it in a moment.

 

Connor gets up, side-stepping boxes until he’s standing in front his wall of posters. In the late afternoon light, he notices their crumpled corners and the colors are faded from the sun and the dust. He reaches out, prying the corner of one until the tape comes loose. The sight of the bare wall beneath is strangely satisfying.

 

There’s a rose growing in his mother’s garden, climbing up the side of the house all the way to his window.  A soft breeze brings its scent through the open window, heady and familiar.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The timeline is loosely based on this season, accounting for Hitchcock being the interim coach.  
> I ended up leaving the ending open to interpretation. I have an idea of what happened in the end, but I'd like to hear your ideas too, if you wanted to share them in the comments.  
> You can also find me on [twitter.](https://twitter.com/holtdad)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Petals](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19794298) by [Annapods](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annapods/pseuds/Annapods)




End file.
